


My Soul to Keep

by TheCorrosivePen



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: But a lot of Tom/Hermione, Clever Hermione Granger, Dark Fairy Tale Elements, Dark Fantasy, Edgar Allan Poe References, F/M, Halloween, Hogwarts Forbidden Forest, Hogwarts Sixth Year, Manipulative Tom Riddle, Not Quite Tomione, Psychological Horror, Seduction, Sexual Content, Thriller, Tom Riddle is His Own Warning, Tom Riddle is Not Voldemort, canon compliant if you squint, gothic horror, hell is real, satanic rituals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-20
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-08 21:21:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 12,865
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27113221
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheCorrosivePen/pseuds/TheCorrosivePen
Summary: In which Tom Riddle is not quite a ghost, Hermione Granger just wants to live past midnight and things most definitely do go bump in the night.A mix of dark fairy tale, gothic horror and psychological thriller. When Hermione meets an alluring stranger at the All Hallows Eve Ball, she has no idea how much her life will transform in a matter of hours. Hours that may just be her last.A Halloween themed short story, just for the chills and thrills. Already complete as usual. New section every other day until the 31st.
Relationships: Hermione Granger/Tom Riddle
Comments: 42
Kudos: 143





	1. One: Cinderella’s Red Masque

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome!
> 
> I haven't done a themed story in so long... not since a Christmas Bellarke for The 100 in 2015. Anyway, I'm super excited to share this story that pairs Tom Riddle and Hermione Granger in a Gothic Horror/Dark Fairy Tale/Psychological Thriller sort of tale. As some of you may know, I really liked writing the pairing of Tom and Hermione in Where the Broken Ends Meet (Dramione endgame). This story gave me the opportunity to play more in that space with fresh takes on their characters. Even if Tom/Hermione is not your pairing of choice, I would encourage you to give this a try as it is, above all else, a thrilling tale of All Hallows Eve and the consequences of entering the woods under a full moon (which is on Halloween this year!) with a handsome stranger.
> 
> This is one continuous story, but I've broken it into seven movements. If you prefer to read it as a whole, wait until Halloween for all the parts to be posted. If you're okay doing it a la carte, new movements posted every other day until then.

~*~ One: Cinderella’s Red Masque ~*~

“Aren’t you going to dance?”

Hermione Granger grimaced, then instantly tried to mask her reaction. Ignoring the inquiry, she gazed up at the black candles dripping scalding wax from the enchanted ceiling of the Hogwarts Great Hall. The dark wax vaporized before it could rain a cavalcade of pain upon the masked dancers below, but the effect still set her nerves on edge.

Or maybe it was the atmosphere of the dance itself. She’d never attended the All Hallows Eve Ball before—life and death encounters of the very real variety had derailed any opportunity in the past. She was only here tonight because Harry had practically begged her on his knees, insisting he needed her as moral support in his effort to ignore Dean Thomas’ tongue down Ginny Weasley’s throat. And who was Hermione Granger to refuse a desperate Harry Potter?

So here she was, surrounded by the macabre, desperately trying to be reminded of anything but death or doom. But the ghosts were out in full force and the walls dripped enchanted waterfalls of blood. Despite—or perhaps because of—the shivers that wouldn’t stop coursing down her spine, she had to admit the decorating committee had outdone themselves.

But something felt off beyond the ghoulish decorations. A sense of foreboding had settled firmly in her gut the moment she’d entered the hall with Harry—a feeling she only got when true danger lurked near. She’d felt this sinking sensation at the Ministry of Magic and look how that had ended. A stronger tremor wracked her frame and she gritted her teeth, refusing to remember.

Where the bloody hell had Harry gone? She scanned the crowd, but found no sign of him or his harlequin mask. A cleared throat beside her reminded Hermione that she was, unfortunately, not alone.

With a sigh, she turned to face Cormac McLaggen. His unmistakable blond curls overflowed the edges of a stylistic Devil’s mask, which concealed most of his face.

“No, Cormac. I am not going to dance.” Especially not with you. But she didn’t voice that part. He’d been following her around for weeks now and what had been mildly flattering in the wake of Ron’s disgusting hook up with Lavender Brown had become tiresome and unwelcome.

Lacking all common sense and manners, he settled further into the alcove beside her, paying no heed to the enchanted blood—Godric, she hoped it wasn’t real—suddenly pouring over the collar of his red cape. When he didn’t react to the continued stream of liquid, Hermione was mollified by the realization that the gory sight was an illusion.

She slanted her gaze toward him, barely concealing her groan of frustration. “Cormac, I really would prefer to be alone right now.”

Cormac’s mouth twisted into what he must have thought a devilish grin, but she found to be a toothy grimace. “You’re too beautiful to be all alone at a dance, Hermione.”

She didn’t bother to conceal her grimace this time. “Go away, Cormac.”

“But—”

“The lady asked you to leave,” a new voice cut in, deeper and smooth like satin. A shudder ran through her that had nothing to do with the black candles and enchanted blood. “So leave.”

Cormac looked on the verge of arguing, but when he turned to face the intruder his mouth snapped shut and he was across the room before Hermione could take another breath. Pulse fluttering at her throat, she twisted slowly toward her rescuer.

Her gaze immediately caught on the gleaming waves of ebony that framed his face, the haunting candlelight making the luscious strands seem alive. His mask of raven-black feathers covered only his eyes, exposing defined cheekbones that seemed razor-sharp in the shadows of their dim alcove. Hermione couldn’t help the tendril of heat that shot through her as her focus caught on his lips, full and begging her to—she snapped her eyes shut. No. She would not act like— let alone think like—some hormonal teenager. She was not bloody Lavender Brown for Godric’s sake.

She forced a steady inhale and then another until her pulse wasn’t a jackhammer against her flushed skin. Only when she was sure she’d mastered her reaction, did she open her eyes to find liquid sapphire burning into her from the depths of the black feather mask. All her preparation was nearly undone in an instant, but Hermione refused to succumb to her baser instincts and gritted her teeth until the heat beneath her skin was a mere itch instead of a fathomless tsunami.

Then she forced her lips to move. Her vocal cords to vibrate with only the slightest hitch. “Thank you. But I didn’t need your assistance.”

The boy across from her shrugged, drawing her eyes to the strong line of his shoulders. He was taller than her by perhaps a head or more. She tilted her chin up to find his luminous stare again.

“I don’t suppose you did, but I found him tiresome. It seemed kinder to both of us to dispatch of him quickly.”

Hermione’s brow furrowed as she listened to the velvet tones of his deep voice. She didn’t recognize him and there was something about his speech pattern that seemed… off. As if he weren’t accustomed to speaking or perhaps had come from another time entirely.

She shook her head and schooled her features into a neutral expression before he finished his explanation. There was no reason to be paranoid and ridiculous. This was Hogwarts and Dumbledore was in this very hall. She could be no safer.

“I guess that’s true.” She held out her hand. “I don’t believe we’ve met. I’m Hermione.”

He held her gaze with a magnetic energy that unsettled every facet of her as he raised her hand to his lips. The soft satin of them seared into Hermione as he brushed a kiss across her skin. He murmured, “enchanted,” and kept her hand against his mouth a beat too long.

Hermione snatched her hand back, fighting valiantly against the flush that threatened to overtake every millimeter of her. “And you are?”

His flashed a grin that was more predatory grace than kindness. It seemed Hermione’s pulse didn’t mind.

“Of course. Forgive my abhorrent manners. I’m Tom.”

Hermione ran through a mental list of every Hogwarts student she knew. No Tom meeting his description was anywhere in the depths of her memories. “You’re not a current student.”

“No,” he readily admitted. His lips quirked into a dangerous smile that made her heart hammer and her hackles rise. “I suppose you could say I’m an alumnus.”

“I wasn’t aware alumni were invited to the ball.”

“They weren’t.”

So he admitted to being an interloper. The warning in the pit of her stomach was growing every second she spent with him, but Hermione couldn’t help the curiosity that roiled just as strongly. Who was this darkly enchanting young man? Why was he here? And why in Godric’s name had he chosen to talk to her?

Tom took a half step closer and Hermione’s heart stuttered. She tried to take a deep breath, but he was too close now and all she could smell was cloves and something darker—an aroma that bypassed her head and seared into her flesh, leaving her legs unsteady and her heart off kilter. She tamped down the sensations, the unwelcome desire he evoked. She needed to get away from him. Immediately.

“I should really—”

“Dance with me.”

Hermione’s mouth hung open a moment too long. “I hardly know you.”

“All the more reason to dance with me.” His sapphire eyes gleamed as he peered down at her. “It’ll give you the chance to get to know me.”

“You’re not supposed to be here.”

He didn’t deny it. “Are you going to tell on me?” His tone was mocking, his eyes darkening to a deep cobalt as they dared her to act, to call him out.

But Hermione wasn’t a know-it-all first year anymore and despite the misgivings tangled up in her gut, she knew she wouldn’t alert the faculty to his presence. But that didn’t mean she trusted Tom.

No, she would handle this on her own. It was a far cry better than trying not to think about Ron and Lavender or the fact that death could be just around the corner for any of them now that Voldemort had begun to marshal his forces.

She held out a hand. “Fine. I’ll dance with you.”

His answering smile stole the breath from her lungs. It was nothing like the predatory grins he’d bestowed upon her earlier in their conversation. This expression transformed his face from darkly enchanting to boyish and light, the harsh edges eaten away by his joy. Perhaps he truly was a harmless boy from a different year, here to experience the school he’d left behind.

Before she could think any further on it, his hand was at her waist, searing through the thin black satin of her dress and then skating across her bare back.

She’d enlisted Ginny’s help transfiguring a gown of silvery cobwebs floating ethereally over effervescent black that clung to her every curve. It was scandalously low in the back, dipping to below her waist, but a conservative halter in front prevented the staff from sending her to change. The skirt hung freely, but highlighted her every movement, the cobwebs sliding across her thighs and hips like melted butter. It was designed to show her off; it was designed to make Ron Weasley notice.

Right now she couldn’t remember what Ron looked like. Tom’s fingers brushed across the exposed base of her spine and Hermione had to bite her tongue to hold in the gasp he elicited. She used her free hand to adjust her cobweb mask, buying an extra second to steel herself before allowing him to pull her fully into his arms. One hand settled on his broad shoulder while the other was enveloped in his strong grip as he began to move them through the motions of a waltz.

For a half second, Hermione had two left feet and no memory of the extensive training she’d undergone in preparation for the Yule Ball during the Tri-Wizard Tournament. Then she remembered to how to breathe. Then how to waltz.

She was still all too aware of his hand on her bare back, but as they circulated the room she slowly began to relax in his hold. Tom was a skilled dancer, natural in his movements, gentle in his unspoken directions. Hermione found she didn’t have to pay much attention to the placement of her feet or which step came next. His subtle lead changes were more than sufficient to alert her of an upcoming turn or promenade. It was a welcome change from the boys Hermione often found needed her to lead them. Not that she’d danced much since the Yule Ball.

Hermione swallowed hard and tried not to think of the chasm of loss that gaped between those enchanted memories and the harsh reality she now inhabited. Tom shifted and suddenly they were closer, his lips brushing her hair as he murmured, “are you alright?”

Hermione realized she had a death grip on his hand and instantly tore away. “I need…” She swallowed hard and tried again, “I need some air.”

His eyes flickered between sapphire and cobalt for a long moment before he caught her hand again. “Follow me.”

Every sane part of her screamed that going somewhere with this dark stranger was the last thing she should do, but the ache in her chest that had grown during their dance was too much for her to bear. She needed out of this room. Out of this school. Just out.

So she allowed him to lead her from the Great Hall and into the darkness of the deserted corridors and then out into the chilled night, the light of the full moon dripping down upon them in luminous silver streams as the stars glittered in the darkness beyond.


	2. Two: Into the Forbidden Woods

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, I'm so glad some of you are interested in this! So happy to go on this journey with you.

~*~ Two: Into the Forbidden Woods ~*~

For a moment Hermione’s breath caught on the splendor of the diamond flecked sky, her steps faltering. Tom steadied her, his arm wrapping around her waist. She gasped at the contact, unable to stifle her response, but he hardly seemed to notice. His gaze was locked on the sky above as well, his eyes glowing sapphire embers in the moonlight. For a moment his jaw stiffened and his stare darkened to cobalt, but then the tension seeped away and he spun his focus to Hermione.

“Beautiful.”

The hunger in his gaze, in the parting of his full lips, spoke to more than an observation of the night beyond. Hermione looked back up at the stars. “I often wish I could fly among the stars. Just be free to wander the universe. I wanted to be an astronaut when I was younger. Before I knew magic was real.”

“I never had the chance to dream.”

Her gaze swung back to Tom. “What do you mean?”

He no longer looked at her. “I didn’t know magic existed for the longest time either, but I knew I was different. Wrong. I only wanted the power to fix what was broken inside me. The power to make them see me as I am and not as the abomination they perceived.”

“Even your parents…” Hermione wasn’t sure what she was trying to ask.

Tom’s eyes slid toward her for a heartbeat and then returned to the depths of the Forbidden Forest. “Salazar, no. My mother was a weak whore who died soon after I was born and my father was a joke. I grew up without them.”

Something in his story, beyond the scorn and sadness, stirred a memory just outside her reach. Hermione squeezed her eyes shut and tried to follow the thread, but it frayed and disintegrated the harder she pulled. The apprehension returned full force and she started to ease away from Tom. But the growing distance between them was nearly as chilling as the disquiet deep within her gut.

He caught her hand, too tight, almost desperate. “Please don’t leave me.”

“What do you want from me, Tom?” It was perhaps the only question that mattered now. She’d only just met him and yet something thrummed between them. Something that felt unnatural and yet comfortable. It was as if they’d known each other a lifetime ago and the dust just beginning to lift from her hidden memories. Except she was sure they’d never met. And she was just as sure he didn’t belong here.

“Don’t ask me questions I can’t answer.”

Hermione stared down at where their hands clasped, his knuckles white with the force of his grip. “Let go of me.”

“Promise you won’t leave.”

She stared up at him, searching. His expression was inscrutable, but his eyes were a tempest of emotion, too tangled for her to properly interpret. She raised her free hand and slid it slowly across his chiseled jaw and then up his sculpted cheek until her fingers brushed the feathers of his mask. His skin was like liquid silk, broken only by the rough scrape of stubble along his jaw. She could feel his breath catch at her touch, watch the rapid tattoo of his pulse at the base of his throat as she grasped his mask and pulled it away.

The feathers fluttered lifelessly to the ground as she drank in every facet of him. He was more handsome than she’d imagined. The ruggedly cut jaw and cheekbones were framed by dark brows and arresting, luminous eyes that begged her to drown in their depths. His ebony locks, freed from the band of the mask, tumbled across his brow, just obscuring one eye in a roguishly striking manner.

Hermione forced her hand away from his face. From the siren call of his heated skin. “Why should I promise that?”

He startled, as if he’d forgotten entirely that he’d been pleading with her to stay. He didn’t respond immediately, but instead brought his free hand to her cobweb mask, removing it and dropping it to the stairs beneath them.

“It’s only fair I get to see you too,” he murmured, luminous sapphire scouring every contour of her features until Hermione was sure he could see her deep flush under the dim light of the moon.

Hermione considered him, her curiosity surging beyond her unease. “How about this. I will promise to stay with you while the moon is out if—and only if—you tell me why you’re here.”

Tom ran a hand through his ebony waves, the gesture sending his hair into a disordered chaos that only made him more appealing. “You promise you will stay, until the moon sets, no matter what I tell you?”

It was a fool’s bargain, but nothing waited for her within the castle walls, no reason to refrain from an adventure with a handsome stranger. Let Harry and Ron have their dramas tonight; she would write her own story by the light of the moon. “I promise.”

He held her gaze, eyes deepening to cobalt and mouth pursing cruelly. Then she blinked and the expression was gone. He trailed a finger down the length of her hand and then turned away, releasing her entirely. “I followed a rift from the next world back into this one. It is only open until the moon reaches its apex tonight. If I complete a sacrificial ritual, however, I will be able to remain in this world and not be forced back into the abyss of souls.”

She stared at him wide-eyed and gaping. “You... you’re dead?”

“That might be severely oversimplifying it.” He cocked his head, seeming to consider the best way to explain. “There are portions of me that are dead and others that are not quite alive. Only a very small amount of my soul is living, as you would likely define it. I’m afraid I made a bit of a mess of my life—rather literally—when I was indeed alive.”

“So you’re not a ghost?”

Tom bestowed a rueful smile upon her before raising his hand and trailing it gently along her cheek. “Do you know any ghosts who can do this?”

Hermione swallowed and resolutely ignored the heat surging through her at even the barest of his caresses. “I suppose not.”

He withdrew a half step and glanced up at the moon. Hermione followed his stare. The luminous orb was perhaps twenty degrees above the horizon, still hovering like an enchanted lantern upon the treetops. He held out a hand. “Walk with me, Lady Cobweb?”

Hermione nearly rolled her eyes at the ridiculous title, but she took his hand and let him lead them toward the dark shores of the Black Lake. After a few minutes of comfortable silence during which she grew accustomed to the heat searing into her from their clasped palms, she inquired, “and what shall I call you? Lord Raven?”

He lifted a brow at her and then glanced down at his midnight jacket and waistcoat. Neither sported feathers, but Hermione could hardly forget how he’d looked wearing the elaborately festooned mask. The dark sweep of feathers adding to his dangerous aura. His eyes jewels in a bed of silken darkness.

“I suppose that will do,” he replied at last, resuming their stroll along the murky shores. “Have you heard the term for a group of ravens before?”

Hermione nodded, unease tempering her curiosity as she answered, “An unkindness, if I’m not mistaken.”

“Indeed,” he murmured, so low it was barely audible in the quiet night.

They walked in silence as the moon continued to climb the ladder of stars in the sky. More than once Hermione questioned the wisdom of wandering the school grounds with a total stranger. But every time her curiosity cut through her fear, the heat of Tom’s palm against her own enough to keep her following in his wake despite her nebulous doubt.

She’d never felt this way with anyone, had never known two people—if he truly was a person—could experience this… connection. She might not trust him, but she wanted to be beside him, to feel his skin against hers, to listen to him breathe the same air.

She let out a shuddering breath and shook her head, attempting to derail the perilous direction her thoughts were trending. She was not some air-headed bimbo like Lavender Brown. She was smart. She did not throw herself at boys she’d only just met.

But she did, apparently, go on walks with them under the full moon on All Hallows Eve. And she did let them lead her into the Forbidden Forest.

Hermione blinked, then frowned.

When had they veered away from the lake? She couldn’t remember. She’d been too caught up in the peace she felt with Tom by her side to pay any heed to the direction of their stroll. Now though, her whole body tensed as she studied the dark forest around them, the mangled trees seeming to lean inward as they passed. Something rustled in the bushes beyond and she sucked in a sharp breath, adrenaline racing through her veins.

Tom gathered her against him, his warmth a welcome comfort against the eerie chill of the looming forest. “It’s nothing to worry about, Lady Cobweb.”

“Forgive me if I’m not accustomed to prancing around the forest at midnight, Lord Raven,” she groused, but settled fully against him, thankful for his presence despite her misgivings.

His head snapped to sky, scanning frantically until he found the orb of the moon. It was higher now; more time had passed than she’d realized. She felt him relax against her, the tension draining from his frame. “We still have time.”

She wasn’t entirely sure what he meant by that. “So if you’re not a ghost, but you’re not truly alive either, what are you?”

His features gathered in confusion for a moment before transforming to a bland smile that didn’t reach his dark cobalt eyes. “I’m honestly not sure. I hadn’t thought about it. There are more pressing matters for me to consider.”

“Like your ritual sacrifice.”

“So you remember that part.”

“It’s not the sort of thing one forgets, Tom.” His name felt heavy in her mouth, weighted by more than the mere consonants and vowels.

Tom paused, bringing Hermione into the circle of his arms. She could feel the strength of him, the muscles toned and sure, so very different from the boys she’d known. Except for Viktor Krum. But Tom didn’t remind her of Viktor; he was far more dangerous.

He leaned further into her, breath feathering her cheek as he roughly murmured, “You’re cleverer than most, aren’t you, Hermione?”

“But not clever enough,” she whispered back, breath catching in her throat.

His head dipped, nose brushing against her cheek. “And why would you say that?”

“I’m here with you, aren’t I?”

She could feel the curve of his lips against her flushed skin as he smiled. “Am I a threat to you?”

“Are you?”

Her heart was thundering in her chest, her entire body tingling in anticipation of something just beyond her reach, of a sensation she knew only Tom could evoke. Her mouth was parched and her palms were clammy where they’d settled against his silken waistcoat.

He pulled back, just far enough that their eyes met. She would have fallen to her knees at the sight of his ravenous sapphire stare if he’d not already held her firmly within his grasp.

“What do you think, Hermione? Am I a threat?”

“Yes,” the word escaped from her lips before she could think better of it. Before she could understand if it was a wish, a prayer or a warning.


	3. Three: A Tell-Tale Prince Charming

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ya'll rock. Thanks to those of you who have dropped a note or even just clicked on this. It's always so much fun to discover who enjoys the various offerings I put up as writing sacrifices (pun perhaps intended here). Anyway, thanks for trying this little story out.
> 
> Chapter title shamelessly co-opted from the Edgar Allan Poe story.

~*~ Three: A Tell-Tale Prince Charming ~*~

Tom smirked, all sharp edges and undisguised desire. “Clever, like I said.”

She should turn away now, should run until he could not catch her, until the forest swallowed her whole and she was free of this twisted fusion of desire and horror burgeoning within her. But his eyes were a siren’s song and his lips were far too close to hers.

She couldn’t want this. But she was already kissing him. She’d already stumbled off the precipice and now the only thing left to do was fall. He was undeniably real against her, no trace of anything but human desire and heat in his every caress. She opened her mouth for him readily, begging him to devour her, to steal her soul away into the depths of his wickedness.

Hermione knew he was wrong. Could sense it just as surely as she could touch the humanity of him. But Godric, he was making her feel something else entirely, far beyond the heated fumbles she’d endured with boys at home during breaks from school and an entire universe away from the cold formality of her relationship with Viktor.

The bark of a tree dug into her back and she realized her dress was pushed up to her hips, her legs wrapped around his waist as he feasted upon the exposed flesh of her clavicle.

This wasn’t her. This couldn’t be her.

But she needed him closer. Her hands dug into his satin waves, fingernails trailing viciously across his scalp. He ground her against him, a gasp escaping his lips and echoing across her skin. Hermione whimpered—honest to Merlin whimpered—when she felt him press against the apex of her thighs.

Every sigh she’d ever overheard when the other girls recounted their carnal adventures suddenly made so much more sense. This wasn’t just the slide of lips or the clandestine brush of skin. This was desire made manifest. The promise of a pleasure she hadn’t ever deigned to imagine.

And she was experiencing it with a boy who was something like dead in the heart of the Forbidden Forest under a glutted moon on All Hallows Eve.

And he was going to kill her.

The sudden horrifying clarity of the thought was nearly enough to permeate the lusty haze. But not quite. She couldn’t seem to stop her hands from pulling off his jacket, her hips from seeking his. Not even when she knew in her bones that he had led her here to kill her. That she was his ritual sacrifice.

But if Tom was kissing her, he wasn’t killing her. So she didn’t waver, didn’t attempt to temper the desire coursing through her veins. They had time. His words made sense now. The ritual had to be completed before the moon reached its apex. But until then he could delay his dark sacrifice and she could find a way to stop him, a way to see the light of dawn.

She didn’t allow herself to question what sort of boy would seduce the girl he meant to sacrifice. Nor did she examine the desperation that seemed to fuel his every caress. No, she had only one purpose now: survival. And if she needed to surrender her body to him to ensure that end, then she would.

The new paradigm should have extinguished the heat roiling in her core, but it didn’t. If anything, the heightened awareness, the newfound danger made her burn hotter. Her caresses turned brash and uninhibited. He was a viper, but Hermione was no defenseless hare. She would let him believe her none the wiser. Let him dull his senses in this dangerous liaison until the opportune moment arose or the moon reached its final ascent.

Hermione gasped as his teeth scraped the column of her neck, her head rocking back with a thud against the gnarled bark of the yew tree. Her eyes traced the sky, searching for the height of the moon. It glowed brightly as ever beyond the shadow of the forest, higher still than before. A silent calculation of the remaining hours until its zenith warred with the heady urge to fully surrender to the ecstasy of his lips and forget her precarious position.

She just barely discerned that she had perhaps an hour or two until his window closed. If he was to be believed. But Hermione had the uncanny feeling that Tom hadn’t outright lied to her, but merely obscured the truth when he could have concealed it. Perhaps this… connection she felt was not so very one sided after all.

And perhaps her faith in him—that this sacrifice was not entirely his choice—would simply get her killed. It didn’t seem as dire as it ought to with his lips on her cheek and his hand up her dress.

She took a shaky breath and dragged his lips to hers. She only had to distract him until the moon began its descent. Then it would be too late and whatever plans he might have made would be foiled.

Never mind that she’d never had a boy’s hands on her thighs like this. Never mind that she was burning up, trembling with tension she could not understand. Never mind that this was not what she’d ever imagined.

Because, despite it all, Hermione knew she wanted him. It was improper, beyond absurd, perilous beyond measure, but she would welcome him, this Lord Raven with death in his shadow. Perhaps if his touch had seemed manufactured or controlled, she could have found another way, but his hands against her were raw and earnest, fractured by a pain, an unbridled desperation she could not quite discern. She wanted to devour his suffering until she understood why he had brought her here. Why her death was his choice.

“Hermione,” he rasped and she felt it in her core, in the flutter of muscles she’d never before felt ache.

He had no right to her—to her body or her life—but she only sighed in response. His grip on her tightened and then they were falling, sideways and backward into the abyss of darkness and beyond. But it was only the Forbidden Forest slanting sideways as he laid her down upon the mossy ground. Only a spray of stars upon the velvet carpet of the night that coiled around her, blanketing her in eerie shadow.

His jacket had fallen beside them and now he stretched it out upon the mossy loam, pulling her gently atop him as he settled back against the fine silk. Hermione’s fingers traced the cruelly sharp line of his cheek and then the equally defined slope of his jaw. Liquid sapphire eyes stayed fixed upon her face as she drew the edges of him. Her fingers trailed the seam of his swollen lips and he shuddered beneath her, lips parting to admit the tip of her index finger. Delicious heat swirled within her as his tongue circled the digit, a promise she could not quite comprehend within his hungry stare.

Hermione’s knees dug into the damp earth beneath his coat as she lowered herself to hover just above his parted lips.

“Why am I here, Tom?” Her voice was different. Breathy and languid in ways that made it seem entirely foreign. As if another girl entirely had asked the question.

Tom kept his molten stare fastened on her as he dragged a nail down the line of her jaw, mirroring her previous exploration.

“I can’t entirely say,” he murmured. “Perhaps it was the dress or perhaps that you so very clearly wished to be alone.”

“But you didn’t leave me alone.”

“No,” his thumb brushed across her lips, pulling her bottom lip down as it passed. “I did not.”

She needed to keep him talking. No matter what he was doing to her nerve endings. No matter how badly she wanted to tear every lick of clothing from both of them and discover how exactly she could sate this ache between her legs. The more they talked, the higher the moon rose and she needed time on her side.

Hermione stole a messy kiss that turned her vision blurry before forcing more words out in that voice that could not possibly be her own. “What do you want with me?”

He frowned up at her, his dark brows knitting together for a moment. “Only what you will give me. I would not take what you did not offer willingly.”

That she immediately deduced, was a lie. But she supposed he didn’t intend the statement to include her life. It was clear he was talking about more innocuous matters such as Hermione’s position atop him, enchanted cobweb skirts bunched at her thighs.

“If I am to give you my… virginity,” her cheeks heated at the admission, “then I feel it is only fair I know more about you.”

Tom stared up at her, agog. “You’ve never…?”

“No,” she admitted sharply, moving to swing her leg so she could remove herself from what had instantly become a horribly awkward situation. If she weren’t trying to save her own life, she’d be fleeing into the forest at top speed and praying she never saw his painfully handsome face again.

He caught her hips firmly, preventing any such escape. “I apologize, I don’t wish for you to be shamed or embarrassed. I had simply made the assumption that a girl who can kiss as fiercely as you must have entertained other suitors.”

Once again she was struck by his vernacular. Something about the cadence and word choice harkened back to another era. Hermione forced herself to relax against him. To let the shame of her inexperience fade. “I am not the most trusting person and I have yet to find a suitor that I believe is… right for me.”

“And yet you are here with me.” It was an echo of his earlier observation, but so much more charged with all that had passed between them since.

“I do not trust you.”

“Good,” he murmured, a finger trailing from her jaw to the edge of her bodice. “You shouldn’t trust me at all.”

She trembled at his light caress, but held as steady as she could. “So will you tell me something about you?”

“Will you let me have you?”

Just the timbre of his deep voice as he uttered those words assured her surrender. But she would not let him know how flimsy her resistance had become despite knowing he was not quite mortal and planned to use her in the most foul way.

But the boy staring up at her didn’t seem a murderer; he seemed lost, desperate for her in ways that could have been alarming, but were instead empowering.

Hermione dipped her mouth to his ear, “tell me about yourself and I’ll tell you how much of me you can have.”

She felt rather than heard him swallow. Then he started speaking, dulcet baritone rising steadily above the restless hum of the forest. “I was born to a father who feared me and a mother too weak to care for me. I was raised in an orphanage until I turned eleven and entered Hogwarts. I was both a prefect and Head Boy, but faded into relative obscurity upon graduation. I had plans for my life. They never quite came to fruition. In desperation and stupidity, I ruined my life and any possibility of a peaceful afterlife. But that’s what I exceed at most of all, Hermione. Ruining things.”

Once again she felt the stirrings of a memory she ought to recall, a feeling that his story was not so foreign to her. But the edges were still too frayed and she could do nothing but shake her head and cast the feeling aside once more.

“You’re not so old,” she observed instead.

Tom let out a bitter laugh that crawled down her spine and chased away a portion of the heat. “Don’t believe everything you see, Lady Cobweb. Looks can be deceiving.”

But his image didn’t flicker, not even when she cast a wandless revealing spell upon him. He was exactly as brutally handsome as he’d been before, but perhaps sadder now.

“Why do you want to return to this world? What’s left for you to do here?”

He blinked up at her, eyes darkening from sapphire to cobalt in an instant. “It has little to do with this world and much to do with where I currently reside. As I mentioned, I destroyed any possibility of my soul finding peace when I… well, when I was young and impetuous. So when parts of me passed along into the next world, we were not united in a place of quiet harmony, but rather boundless agony. You see, Hermione, I have been in Hell for several years now and I will do anything within my power to escape it.”

And now that she knew, Hermione could see it in the lines of his face, the tension that never quite escaped his jaw, the darkness that descended behind the luminous glow of his eyes. He had suffered—infinitely and truly. She pressed a despairing kiss to the corner of his mouth.

He didn’t plan to kill her out of any malice. Not really. He was going to kill her because she was his only escape from Hell itself. She supposed that really didn’t make it any better, but it certainly made it easier to understand, to rationalize away until she could almost forgive him the impulse.

Not that she could truly forgive him for luring her out here, seducing her and sacrificing her. That wasn’t the sort of thing that was ever forgiven no matter how strongly connected she felt to him.

She barely contained a sigh.

Godric, she wished this evening had played out differently. How she yearned for a reality where he was simply a handsome stranger leading her on an intoxicating adventure through the forbidden. Where he was the type of boy she wouldn’t regret. But he wasn’t even a boy.


	4. Four: A Cask of Poison Apples

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for all the support. This short story is definitely a spot of wicked fun for me.
> 
> WARNINGS: Mature sexual content (but not quite explicit... too many metaphors or something like that)

~*~ Four: A Cask of Poison Apples ~*~

An owl screeched in the distance and both their heads snapped up to search for the moon. Time had slipped away again and they had perhaps an hour or less until it reached its height. Hermione forced a shuddering breath into her lungs and looked back down at Tom.

He was staring at her with such painful longing that she nearly fractured under the weight of his emotion. Who was he to desire so her strongly if his ultimate motive was to drain the life from her? How dare he make her feel this way. How dare he give her even the barest hope of a reprieve.

“Why me, Tom? And be honest this time.” It was more plea than question, some of her frantic anxiety leaking through at a last.

He raised a finger to trace her brow, then her cheek and finally the seal of her lips. Then he let his hand drop back to the wrinkled fabric of his jacket. “I told you. You were so desperate to be alone.”

“But why does that matter?”

“I’ve spent my entire life alone,” he admitted softly, eyes transforming to luminous jewels. “I have been alone so long I don’t think I truly recall what it is like to share purpose, to share breath and vitality, with another.”

Hermione’s brow furrowed. “You were never intimate…?”

Tom shook his head, dark waves sliding across his brow. “You misunderstand. I have always been this… appealing, so I have never wanted for company in matters of intimacy. But I have never shared those moments with someone who could truly understand me. Someone clever and beautiful in equal measure. In short, someone like you.” When he smiled up at her it was tarnished by a sadness she wasn’t sure she could trust. “I saw through your façade, Hermione, and straight to your loneliness. It is the mirror image of mine. You set yourself apart because you see too much, because you are smarter and will not play such pedestrian games.”

She wasn’t entirely sure she agreed with that assessment of her personality, but it had given her further insight into Tom himself, which she supposed was helpful. And she had wanted to know, to understand the suffering that clung to him like a shroud. To have lived life utterly alone in this world and then to have suffered in the next. It was enough to pull at her heartstrings, to almost make her wish she could help him.

But she would not sacrifice herself for his mistakes, not even when she could understand the bitter sting of his loneliness, could see the toll of his choices written across his features. While they might be more alike than she cared to admit, he was not more valuable than her life, than the fight she had yet to wage at Harry’s side against Voldemort.

So she merely pressed their lips together once more and prayed that time would keep slipping away. His hands traced the line of her bare spine and she shivered against him, driving her hips closer to his. She could feel the curve of his smile against her tingling lips.

“So may I have you, Lady Cobweb?”

Heat surged between her legs and Hermione gasped against his lips. This was the worst decision ever. But she needed more time. Her voice was a breathy moan as she replied, “Yes. Dear Godric, yes, Lord Raven.”

In an instant their positions were reversed and she was staring up at the full orb of the moon, still marching steadily upward in the sable sky. His fingers burned tracks of fire and lightning as they slid up her thighs, pushing the ethereal fabric of her gown aside to reveal her black satin knickers. She hadn’t been thinking about such an intimate encounter when she’d dressed, but she was suddenly glad of the choice, of the sophistication the lace-trimmed satin lent to the occasion. Tom’s breath was hot on her thigh as he dipped his head toward the apex of her thighs. Then his mouth was on her, the thin black fabric the only barrier between them.

Hermione couldn’t help the gasp that escaped, the tightening of her fingers woven into his ebony locks. Sweet Merlin. And he hadn’t even truly touched her yet. When his fingers began to tug away that final scrap between his mouth and her heat, she could do nothing but raise her hips in compliance and unfettered yearning. Her breath was erratic, her heart pounding out a new beat entirely as she anticipated his next move.

She wasn’t disappointed. She’d never imagined a sensation like this, a desire that could bear this much fruit in a mere moment. He became everything to her. The sigh on her lips was him. The rush of heat beneath her skin was him. The overwhelming ecstasy that tore through her and remade her from its scraps was him.

The moon dripped sparkling diamonds around them as she came apart beneath him, as she surrendered to every touch until there was no thinking. No remembering how much peril still surrounded her.

Because the dark boy with ebony hair and eyes of luminous sapphire had already stolen her soul.

When he finally did enter her and break that last barrier between them, she felt no pain. She’d been lost in the haze of their bliss for too long, her nerves trembling with fiery pleasure and that momentary discomfort was swallowed whole by the all-encompassing pleasure that wrung her dry and saturated her anew.

So she clung to him, this dark stranger in a forbidden grove under the perilous light of the moon. She burrowed into him until she could not tell them apart, until she was sure she would remember only the heady and impossible feeling of completion she experienced with him beside her, within her. They fell off pleasure’s cliff more times than she could track, their bodies contorting to new and stimulating positions with seemingly infinite energy.

It was only when she began to shake so severely, her muscles no longer cooperating, that they fell back, side by side against his ravaged jacket and stared into the abyss of stars above.

Hermione’s breath came in pants, which she tried and failed to control. Godric, what had they done? What had she done?

She turned her head to study Tom and sucked in a breath at what she found. He was completely undone, molten sapphire eyes wilder than the creatures of the forest, lips bruised and swollen and begging for her to return to them. His cheeks were flushed, his pale skin stained scarlet, and his neck and torso were littered with deep gouges and angry bite marks.

The work of her nails and teeth she realized, sucking in a sharp breath. She had written a novel of desire across his alabaster skin. It was grotesque. It made heat stir sharply within her, the throb between her legs growing once more.

“Don’t worry,” he murmured softly beside her, “I returned the favor.”

Hermione looked down at her own bare flesh and gasped again. He was right. The marks were perhaps less angry than those littering his skin, but he’d repaid every scratch and bite with one of his own. They were each a battlefield of lust.

“I…” but she trailed off, unsure of what to say. She should apologize. But she wasn’t sorry. What they had done… it had opened a door she hadn’t known was sealed shut. Revealed a knowledge she was unwilling to surrender or forget. He had changed her and she could not find it in her to mind. At least not now.


	5. Five: Quoth the Serpent, “Nevermore”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again for being the best readers ever. I appreciate all of you so much. And on we go to Truth or Consequences (yes, that is a real place in New Mexico, USA). Although this is perhaps more truth and consequences...

~*~ Five: Quoth the Serpent, “Nevermore” ~*~

She shivered as a blast of cold swept over them, rustling the fallen leaves coating the forest floor. Tom frowned and straightened, as if just remembering where he was. She didn’t bother to follow his gaze up to the moon. It wasn’t time yet, but it was close now. A chill that had nothing to do with the sudden cold crept down her spine and suddenly she felt horribly exposed.

Her dress was in tatters—nothing but scraps of once enchanted fabric. She searched frantically for something else to cover her bare flesh, to buffet her against the harsh reality of what she had allowed.

“Take this.” Tom was holding his midnight dress shirt out to her. “I can make do easily enough without it.”

She tentatively took the silken fabric from him, quickly slipping her arms into the oversized holes and buttoning the front closed with trembling fingers. The shirt only emphasized how much larger he was. It fell to her mid-thigh, almost a modest length for a tunic dress and the cuffs hung loosely far below her fingers. She rolled them carefully until the fabric only just swallowed her wrists. The collar exposed far too much of her ravished skin beneath, but it was better than nothing. She found her knickers beside the ruins of her dress and slipped them on, thankful they had survived the carnage.

When she turned back to him, Tom had already donned his trousers and was in the process of securing his belt. His chest was still bare—still littered with the evidence of their indiscretions. He leaned down to pull his socks on and she whimpered at the sight of his back. Long bloody trails were rent across his skin, some still oozing liquid scarlet under the diamond moonlight.

She had done that to him. And she had liked it.

She stumbled away, tripping over a fallen log and sprawling into a bed of cold moss and crisp autumn leaves. She barely registered the pain blooming in her palms and across her battered knees as a hissing penetrated her hazy senses. Hermione froze, some part of her recognizing the danger amidst the chaos of her emotions.

Then she saw it. A snake with a diamond head as large as her palm and a forked tongue tasting the air less than a meter from her. It hissed again and she flinched, breath catching in her trembling throat.

“Don’t move.”

Tom’s voice was disturbingly calm, as if a giant serpent weren’t wending its way closer to her with every passing breath. Hermione had never read about a beast like this, with luminous amber eyes and scales as black as a moonless night. But she was sure it was deadly. Whatever creatures lurked within the depths of this forest were not to be trifled with.

But what could she do? The snake was slithering steadily closer and her wand was lost in the wreckage of her ruined dress.

Tom’s hand was hot, burning even, as it settled on her shoulder. “Trust me.”

She would never trust him, but what choice did she have now? Hermione stayed as still as possible as he moved past her and toward the snake. Its head rose, tongue flicking in his direction. There was a moment where the serpent and Tom merely studied each other, an odd calm enveloping them both. Then it swung its mighty head back toward Hermione and surged forward.

Ghastly hissing filled the air. But it didn’t come from the snake. The creature froze midway through its strike and turned its diamond head sharply toward Tom. It let out a menacing series of hisses. He remained stationary and unflinching. Then the unearthly hisses came again, Tom’s lips moving in foreign patterns. The black scaled beast stared long and hard, its amber eyes seeming to pulse. An instant later it retreated and disappeared into the haunted depths of the spindly trees.

And then she knew.

A wave of nausea tangled with the surge of adrenaline that hit her veins. She lunged back toward her dress, digging frantically for her wand. It took forever for her to feel the reassuring press of the wood against her frantic fingers. But then she was swinging back to where he had stood and uttering every spell she could remember in the turbulent chaos of understanding.

“ _Stupefy_! _Reducto! Diffindo! Perfectus Totalus!”_

Every incantation met its mark, but Tom didn’t so much as waver. His full, kiss-bruised lips twisted in a smile that held too much regret. “I wondered when you would figure it out. You are, after all, the cleverest witch of your age, Hermione Granger.”

Fear and panic drove the next desperate words from her lips. “ _Avada Kedavra_!”

Tom’s luminous eyes widened as the green light blasted through him, but he was entirely unscathed by its deadly effect. “I can’t say whether I’m proud you tried or insulted that you would kill me after what we’ve shared.”

Hermione stared down at her wand. The magic wasn’t working. She blasted a nearby stump with a _reducto_ and it blew to smithereens. Correction, the magic wasn’t working on him. On Tom Marvolo Riddle. Lord Voldemort himself.

The nausea won. Hermione heaved whatever remained of her supper into the nearby flora. She had… she had… she couldn’t bring herself to think it, to allow the truth of her actions to fully manifest in her mind.

Tom was by her side then, his strong hands holding back her loosened hair as she continued to retch. She was shaking so hard, upright only by the grace of his gentle grip on her shoulders. She wanted to tear away. Needed to race into the depths of the forest and lose her way until the truth was so far behind her, she could breath. But he was the only thing keeping her vertical and that made it so much worse.

“I told you before, I’m not quite alive. Not quite dead either, but definitely not alive. Magic in this realm can’t touch me, but nor can I use magic on you or anything else here. I’m as close to a ghost as you can get and still have lungs that breath and blood that flows.” His voice was soft, as if talking to a wounded animal.

The soft vibration of his chest against her quaking shoulders should have made her retch again, but instead she sagged against him. He pulled her away from the bushes and eased them both down on his rumpled jacket once more. Hermione shook violently in the circle of his arms.

“Can you be killed?” She wished her voice was stronger, sharper and filled with hatred. But she couldn’t hate him. Despite who he was. Despite what he was planning to do to her. She couldn’t hate the boy who had showed her the stars within her soul.

But she could still stop him.

He glanced over his shoulder at his ravaged back. “I can certainly bleed. But no, I don’t imagine you could kill me. I am, after all, already dead or something very like it.”

Hermione shifted against him, wishing she had the strength to pull away from the warm comfort of his chest. What sort of Hell would she go to for this weakness? She bit her lip hard enough to bleed. “But what are you? Vol—the older version of you is still alive…”

“If you can call what he’s doing living. I certainly do not.” Tom took a long breath that heated the nape of her neck. “In my arrogance I thought my sanity would remain more or less in tact when I created my Horcruxes. You are aware of those, aren’t you?” She nodded silently and he continued, “but I was dreadfully wrong. The first few times were nothing, but as I continued to search for an escape from the veil, from what must come after, I splintered myself beyond recognition. Perhaps beyond repair.”

She studied his hands clasped over her stomach, just resisting the urge to cover them with her own. “Then why are you so…”

“Sane?” He pressed a light kiss against her nape, the curls of her disheveled updo shifting as he moved. “I’m not. But every time a Horcrux is destroyed, a portion of my soul is freed and returned to me. My body comes from the incantation I performed when I created the diary that your friend Potter destroyed, but another fragment of my soul has since been returned to me. Because these parts of me were stored in some of the first objects, they comprise the majority of me. Thus, I am more than half myself now whereas that pathetic resurrected fool is only a tiny portion. He’s more dark magic than man.”

Hermione blinked. “You don’t hate Harry? You don’t want him to die? And you aren’t working for… him?”

“I am absolutely not working for that disgusting creature without a proper body or brain. I would kill him if I thought it possible in such a short time frame. Perhaps after…” She could feel him shake his head. “But I digress. No, I don’t want your friend Harry Potter to die. I don’t particularly want him to live either, but that’s because I have no opinion on the matter. I simply want to escape Hell, Hermione. The rest is immaterial.”

She looked up at the full orb of the moon nearly at its apex. “And you’ll do whatever necessary to ensure your escape.”

His embrace tightened, pulling her closer into him. “Your soul is light and good, Hermione Granger. You will not be damned to Hell like me.”

She was no longer so sure of that. What had occurred between them in the depths of this forest was dark and untamed, rimed with the sort of sin that paved the path to Hell. She shuddered and took an unsteady breath.

Nothing had changed. Everything had changed. But nothing in her plan had changed. She only had to distract him, keep him off kilter long enough to miss his chance at salvation. It might be cruel to keep from him, but she knew now he deserved his dark fate.

“If you were always going to kill me, why…” she couldn’t finish the question. Couldn’t put a voice to the trespasses that had occurred between them. To the dark intimacy that had consumed her.

“Just because I am willing to do everything I can to… survive, doesn’t mean I didn’t find you to be the most alluring soul at that ball. It doesn’t mean I didn’t choose you for another purpose entirely.” His voice was deeper now, suffused with the echo of his desire, tantalizing as he brushed his mouth across the shell of her ear.

Hermione swallowed thickly. “So you want to fuck me more than you want to kill me?”

If he was surprised by her crude language, she couldn’t tell. “No. I wanted to make you shatter until I was your entire universe. I knew you could be a flame to illuminate my darkness, Hermione, and I wanted to see you burn brighter than any star. I wanted to give you something precious before I stole it all away.”

“Why not find someone else to kill then? Why not dance with me, sleep with me and then spare me?”

“Because you are the flame to illuminate my darkness,” he repeated. “This ritual doesn’t work with just any soul. Only the brightest, most kind hearted soul will break my bonds. Only a soul that does not harbor hatred for me. It requires more than a mere death; it requires an exchange.”

Hermione twisted in the circle of his arms, finally finding the strength to stare into the depths of his sapphire eyes. “I will not sacrifice myself for you. I will not make that choice for the ghost of a monster no matter what has passed between us.”

“I know.” His smile was bittersweet and cut like a knife. “I never expected you would give up. The ritual does not require you to give your life. Only for me to take it.”

The moon was suddenly too high and the forest too quiet. Hermione tore from the confines of his embrace and ran.


	6. Six: Beauty and the King of Beasts

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all again for the support. I forgot how much I love little stories like this.

~*~ Six: Beauty and the King of Beasts ~*~

Tom caught her arm before she was even to the edge of the clearing. An owl shrieked in the distance and a chilling breeze swept the leaves into a frantic dance across the mossy ground.

“You can’t run from this.” His bruised lips pursed for a long moment before he spoke again. “I do wish I could tell you I was sorry. That I couldn’t possibly kill you. But I will not lie to you, not now.”

“Do I mean anything to you? Did what happened here mean anything to you?”

His grip tightened and he pulled her closer, until she could see nothing but the unnatural glow of his brilliant eyes in the unadulterated moonlight. “Of course you do. And of course it did. You are going to free me from my prison. I will always remember you and I will always remember what it felt like to be buried in your light.”

Godric, she wished she could hate him. She wished her soul were darker and unable to fulfill the requirement of his sacrifice. But no matter how hard she willed it, the rage and fury remained muted, unable to rise to become the conflagration needed to inspire hatred. Worst of all, he was so clearly not Voldemort that none of her hatred for Harry’s nemesis did her any good against this handsome boy. She could not hate him and that meant Tom was right. Her soul was exactly what he needed.

But the moon was still rising and he still hadn’t lifted a finger to harm her. He’d even rescued her from the snake at the cost of his identity. Of course, he’d been preserving his sacrifice, but he’d still saved her life.

“Dance with me.”

His head cocked to the side as he considered her request. Ebony waves fell haphazardly across his brow and into his eyes. Leaves and other debris were stuck in the unkempt explosion of silken black. He looked feral and wild and she was glad of it. It helped her remember how lethal he truly was.

After a silence filled only by the eerie rustling of the Forbidden Forest, he pulled her firmly against him. Unlike the waltz they’d shared before, her hands now twined at the nape of his neck and his rested boldly on the swell of her ass. Only his trousers and the loose shirt hanging from her petite frame separated them.

They moved quietly, the silence between them lingering but not heavy. This would be their last dance. Either she would succeed and he would be dragged back to Hell or he would kill her. Neither option was particularly pleasant as she swayed in his arms, but it was clear only the nonfatal outcome was an option. She might not hate this boy who had deceived her so masterfully, but she did not value him above her life. He had survived in Hell this long; he could endure eternity. After all, Tom Marvolo Riddle had blood on his hands that she could not pretend away.

The moss was cool beneath her toes, the forest suddenly warmer if only because he was wrapped around her. For a breath, she wished only that the moment would stretch to eternity. That she could forget a not-dead murderer intent on sacrificing her was the boy holding her so desperately. That the moon would never reach its apex and neither of them would be forced to make such a loathsome choice.

But then the owl screeched again and the air shifted, making chills chase across every millimeter of her skin.

His embrace turned stony in an instant and Hermione’s gaze flew to the moon. They were out of time.

She didn’t bother to stifle her shriek as Tom forced her first to her knees and then to her back. It was so different than before, when his mouth had been swallowing her breathless moans of pleasure.

Her cries echoed distantly throughout the forest, but Hermione knew better than to hope someone heard. It was up to her to save herself.

He murmured a foreign incantation and then her limbs were locked to the mossy loam, as if held by steely chains. She stared up at him in shock.

“I thought you said you couldn’t do magic.”

His eyes flashed to deep cobalt. “I lied.”

“Godric,” she breathed. “What did you do to me?”

“Earlier? Nothing. I could have touched your mind, but I was telling you the truth. For this to work, you cannot hate me and you could so easily have done so if I’d forced anything upon you. So no, clever girl, I did not make you do anything at all. But this will be easier if you’re still and I can’t count on you for that.”

Her eyes tracked his every move as he retreated from her and shook one of his dress shoes. A glinting blade dropped into his hand and she barely stifled a gasp. She would not let him see her fear.

He returned to her side with the dagger in hand. The moonlight flashed brilliantly across its polished surface and Hermione’s stomach turned sour.

“Don’t worry, it’s razor sharp. It will be quick, if not entirely painless.”

He said the words without any affect at all, which was perhaps more menacing than the blade itself. She searched his chiseled features desperately for the boy she’d known, for any sign of humanity at all. But he was nothing but marble perfection in the cursed moonlight. The ultimate deceiver.

How much had been a lie? All of it? Even the heat of his mouth against her skin? Even the heady completion of his body within hers?

The sudden blur of his devastating features and the cool chill of the breeze upon her cheeks told her the tears she’d tried to valiantly to conceal had betrayed her. She ground her teeth and refused to give in to the despair they represented. Her fight was not over yet. His blade had not yet burrowed deep in her flesh.

Moonlight flashed, sharp and metallic and then it was too late. But no… she wasn’t bleeding out. The cut he’d made was shallow, barely parting the skin as he traced a series of intricate designs into her trembling flesh.

Her lips were barely able to part as she gasped, “what are you doing?”

He looked up from his work with the deadly blade, the smile cutting across his lips sharp and dangerous. “Claiming you.”

“Why?”

“If I don’t tether us together, another soul could use you to escape. This prevents such an intrusion into the ritual.” He returned to his carvings, moving from her forearms to her thighs. Seemingly satisfied with his bloody work, he shifted to unbutton his shirt from her shaking frame. He might have been able to secure her to the ground, but nothing could stop the terror vibrating through her.

His warm hand pulled aside the fabric on her left side and he set the tip of the blade just above the curve of her breast. She tilted her head forward in a vain effort to see what he inscribed upon her already scarred flesh. But it was no use, so she watched him instead, willing his humanity back to him. Willing him to be anyone else.

She could feel the faint trickle of her blood seeping across her exposed chest, but there was no pain, no further sting of the blade.

Tom cupped her head in his hands, his thumbs wiping away her tears before the cold blade settled against her cheek. “I am grateful for what you will do for me, Hermione Granger.”

“I don’t want to die this way, Tom.”

She didn’t know if she was still trying to distract him or if she had accepted this horrible fate and only now understood how much she stood to lose. The forest was too silent now, only her ragged breaths and Tom’s steady ones filling the void.

“I don’t want to die,” she repeated, the terror slowly washing over her, paralyzing in a way his invisible bonds hadn’t been.

“Shh,” he soothed, dropping a kiss upon her temple. “This isn’t the end. I promise you. You are light and that will guide you to a better place.”

“I don’t believe you,” she hissed, the horror of it all nearly sealing her throat. “If you’re using my soul to free you from Hell, then it’s going to be used in the exchange. And since it’s an exchange with Hell… that’s the only place I’m going.”

She saw the flinch before he could conceal it. The ugly truth he’d still been trying to avoid. His eyes fractured to liquid sapphire in an instant and the marble façade dropped away. “I’m so sorry you don’t get to find peace.”

“But you aren’t going to stop.”

Tom flinched again. “No.”

She caught sight of the orb of the moon out of the corner of her eye. She looked back to him, letting her fear and terror consume her trembling features. “At least kiss me goodbye.”

The blade shook against her cheek as he stared down at her. She begged him to see her, to grant her this last request. Holding her stare, he drew the sharp metal away from her cheek and down to her throat. Her breath caught and she didn’t dare swallow as the dagger rested gently against her thundering artery, able to erase her with the mere twitch of his fingers.

Then he kissed her, hard and desperate. Her mouth opened to him on instinct, a reaction to the now familiar heat of his lips against hers, the sharpness of his teeth and the wicked stroke of his tongue. She wanted to surge upward, to drown herself in the pleasure of him, but the chill of the dagger kept her frozen in place, only her lips drawn into the frantic heat building between them once more.

She needed more. Wanted what they’d shared in this very glen mere hours ago, but that was long gone. His identity and his deception had destroyed that already. But if she was going to die here—if he was truly going to send her to the depths of Hell—then she would take whatever he could give. And she would hold on as long as she possibly could.

Tom’s hand moved and the blade sank into her throat.


	7. Seven: Happily Never After

~*~ Seven: Happily Never After ~*~

She choked and a small geyser of red splashed across his face as he pulled abruptly back from her lips. She waited to feel the edge penetrate deeper. But the dagger tumbled to the mossy ground and Tom let out a blood curdling roar.

Hermione surged upward, the bonds no longer tying her to the sodden ground. She clamped a hand over her neck and stumbled to where her wand lay. She grasped it tightly in her hand as she pointed it at the throbbing pain in her neck. “ _Episkey_.” She repeated the spell several times for good measure before removing the pressure she’d applied. When another torrent of blood didn’t immediately appear, she let out a sigh of relief and turned to face Tom.

He was on his knees, the dagger passing uselessly through his fingers as he tried to pick it up. Hermione jolted at the sight. It took a moment longer to realize what it meant. He was incorporeal now. The moon had reached its zenith.

“You ran out of time,” she observed as she lifted his jacket—still very much real—from the forest floor. She slipped her arms into the sleeves and inhaled the scent of cloves and dark desire. He stared back at her from his prone position, eyes darkening to livid cobalt. “What happens now, Tom?”

“You tricked me.”

“You would have done the same.”

He gave up trying to retrieve the dagger and rose to fully face her. “I suppose I would have.”

She pulled his jacket tightly around her and blinked up at him. “So why aren’t you in Hell?”

He motioned toward her chest. Hermione still couldn’t see what he’d etched into her breast. “What did you do?”

His lips twisted into a jagged smile. “It was both insurance and a back up plan.”

“And what was the back up plan?”

He circled her slowly, ebony locks falling wildly across his feral eyes. “I made you my anchor. As long as you are alive, I can exist here as a ghost. But when you die—and you will die, Hermione Granger—the ritual will be completed and I will return in corporeal form to this world and you… you will go to Hell.”

A chill shot down Hermione’s spine that had nothing to do with the dank air of the Forbidden Forest. “When I die? You don’t have to kill me?”

He stopped in front of her, all sharp edges and smug victory. “No. I would have preferred to return now… to not be trapped in this limbo, but it is still a significant improvement from my previous… accommodations. But as for your question, any type of death—magical, accidental, homicidal, suicidal—will complete our ritual.”

“I hate you.”

He laughed, dark and poisonous. “But you still don’t, Hermione Granger. I made sure of that when I took you on this forest floor and taught you everything you will ever know about pleasure. I made sure of that when I danced with you. I even made sure of that when I kissed you and allowed you to delay the ritual. Because you will always be wondering, Hermione, if I didn’t care. If I meant everything I said about you and me and why I chose you.”

She hated that he was right. That even now she doubted the sincerity of his venom. He couldn’t possibly be so scornful of her. Not after the vulnerability they’d shared throughout the night. Perhaps she could not hate him, but Hermione realized it was equally likely that he could not hate her, could not be as indifferent to her as he wished. They were both trapped in each other’s compass now.

“So what will you do?”

He pressed a phantom kiss to her cheek. She could almost feel the heat of his lips, could still feel the ghost of his touch against every facet of her skin.

“Now I wait for you to die.”

She smiled grimly up at him. “You’re going to be waiting an awfully long time.”

“You’ll find time has little meaning to me, not anymore,” he murmured. “I will have your soul.”

“We’ll see about that, Tom Riddle,” she replied and then turned on her heel and followed the arc of the moon back toward the castle beyond the trees.

She did not look back. She could not bear to see his devastatingly handsome features again. To feel the weight of those eyes composed equally of luminous sapphire and deadly cobalt upon her. She could not bear to remember what she was leaving behind in that meadow with him. To acknowledge just how much she had lost, but also how much she had gained in the final hours of All Hallows Eve.

Her housemates were all safely abed by the time she finished washing the memories from her skin in the bath. She’d healed the scars of his carvings on her arms and legs, but couldn’t bring herself to erase the marks on her torso, the proof that their intimacy had been real.

The mirrors were foggy, but she reached a shaking hand out to wipe the steam away from the glass. Her gaze fell on the letters carved just above her heart. They were backward in the reflection, but unmistakable. TMR. He had marked his initials into her flesh.

She grasped her wand from the shelf beside the sink and held it above the marred flesh. The tip shook violently as it hovered over the still oozing letters. She mouthed the word a hundred times. Then a thousand. But she couldn’t say it. Couldn’t summon enough intention to make the spell emerge from her wand.

Her wand clattered to the floor and Hermione followed in its wake. Her brittle façade collapsed and inhuman whimpers echoed through the empty bath. She pulled her knees to her chest and held fast, rocking against the shame and the horror and the grief.

It might have been an hour later or perhaps a lifetime, that she crawled her way to her knees and then clawed her way into a standing position. The steam had long faded and only her haunted features reflected in the mirror. Her knuckles were white where she gripped the sink, her legs too unsteady to hold her full weight. A shadow passed beyond her shoulder and Hermione’s gaze snapped up. Unholy sapphire eyes met hers. She whipped around—unsteady legs be damned—but there was nothing there. She turned back to the mirror. But only her own dark honey eyes stared back from sunken hollows.

He wasn’t here.

Or perhaps he was.

She shuddered and pulled her robe tightly around her shoulders. She would not let him win. Not today. Not even when she died.

But her fingers traced the shape of his initials against her skin and she knew that was a lie. He’d already captured her soul upon a bed of moonlit moss. And she didn’t know if she could ever find the strength to hate him so completely, to have enough menace flowing through her veins to upend the ritual. But Godric help her, she would try.

“Hermione.”

Her name was a whisper, little more than a murmur upon the wind. But his silken baritone was unmistakable. The sound crept over her skin like a spider’s legs. She shivered violently, but refused to acknowledge him, turning instead to exit the bathroom.

An unbearable cold seared into her neck, down the line of her jaw and she knew he was standing beside her. That his unearthly hand was resting against her skin.

“I will always be with you, my clever girl.” Tom’s lips were an impossible burn against her ear, nothing like the heat of his earlier caresses. “Every moment in this castle, every embrace you allow a lover, every peal of laughter that leaves your lips. I will be there. You will not see me. You may even forget me for a time. But you are mine now and there is nothing you will ever do to change that. No amount of soap to scrub your skin. No number of books on ancient rituals or other magic. Nothing.”

She was biting her lip so hard the taste of blood swelled in her mouth. Hermione took a deep breath and then another. He might drag icy tendrils of despair across her skin now, but he had no true power over her in this state. Tom Marvolo Riddle was nothing but an insubstantial memory now.

She brought her wand to her bloody chest.

 _“Episkey_.”

And then she walked out the bathroom door, paying no heed to the voice that murmured perilous words against her ear. Let him haunt her. She was Hermione bloody Granger and this was not how her story ended.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yay! It's here... the end. Or perhaps the beginning of something else entirely. Anyway, thank you all for going on this journey with me. I much appreciate it!


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